


Of Partners

by Tynytyg



Series: Of Monsters [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Drabbles, F/F, F/M, I just played with the dates a little bit, I'm jet lagged from writing the big angst for Of Monsters so here, Sparring as Flirting, but I tagged them anyway because I love them all the same, fighting as flirting, have something lighter, he can't not curse at sylvain it's in his blood, most of the people here are just mentions, mostly - Freeform, rated T for felix's mouth, they have no idea how to communicate, what's ten years between friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tynytyg/pseuds/Tynytyg
Summary: Five times they danced around their feelings and one time they didn't.---Catherine groans when Leonie’s boisterous laugh drifts up to where they’re sitting, just out of sight in the branches of a big old oak tree. She shifts, pulling Shamir closer in the cradle of her body, and shakes her head.“We were never that dumb and oblivious,” Catherine asserts, and Shamir can hear the smile in her voice.Shamir shrugs slightly, knowing the corners of her own mouth are pulling upwards and glad Catherine can’t see. “You were.”---(A series of prequel drabbles in the same universe as Of Monsters)
Relationships: Catherine/Shamir Nevrand, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Leonie Pinelli
Series: Of Monsters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842439
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Of Partners

**Author's Note:**

> This only roughly fits the format but hey, sue me. Sorry if I bait-and-switched. Thanks to azurite9925 for betaing as usual. Explanations of the math I did for ages and stuff at the bottom!

1

The first time Leonie beats him, Felix is stunned. He is seventeen, and it is their fifth day at the officer’s academy. Everyone is sort of lumped in together, even though everyone knows who will wind up in what house. However, the Officer’s Academy runs its students through two grueling weeks of tests, drills, and classwork to make sure the applicants are ready for the full experience. Everyone also knows that the noble’s kids will make it through whether they deserve to or not, and that seems to be the driving force behind Leonie’s ass-kicking powers when she comes across the training yard at him under Professor Jeritza’s critical eye. 

Lances are heavier and naturally slower than swords. Felix, armed with his favorite training sword, is perhaps a little too cocky after having destroyed three opponents in a row. Sizing up the girl across the pitch, his gaze checks her stance, her clothes, her weapon choice, and her musculature. In a heartbeat, he figures he has her pegged; Leicester alliance, commoner, overeager, undertrained, probably an archer with the idea in her head that if she picks up the lance, she can be a bow knight. Likely swings the lance around like a big stick, ignores the point, and has no idea what to do with the butt end besides hang onto it. No stamina, no technique. Honestly, was Jeritza trying to wear him down with idiots before throwing a real challenge at him?

Which is why he’s completely taken off guard when she sprints across the training ground like a whirlwind and thrusts the point of her wooden training lance directly at his face. Pure reflex carries him out of the way, she certainly telegraphed her move far enough in advance, he just hadn’t been paying attention. Thrown off his rhythm, he spins and tries to nail her in the back, only to find that she’s not there anymore. She forces him onto the defensive, pressing the attack as he parries his way around the edge of the pitch. 

Her form is unique, but effective, not a style he’s seen before. His brain analyzes almost as fast as his sword moves, and Felix ducks under another aggressive thrust. Whoever this girl is, she’s good enough to keep him on his toes, and almost good enough that he doesn’t see any openings. He can feel himself getting irritated; he hates defensive fighting. He was born to be on the offense, despite what his father may think. He backs away, careful of his footing, waiting for her to mess up. Anybody this obviously self-taught must have some major hang-ups.. _There it is._ When she goes for a powerful swing, she leaves herself wide open. Felix dives for it, certain of his victory– 

And lands on his face in the dirt, sharp pain in the middle of his back where she hit him with the butt of her lance, sending him sprawling. 

He comes up spitting and raging, and Jeritza’s boot on his chest is all that stops him from going for the real weapons hanging on one wall. The girl is laughing, all sweat and short, flyaway hair. She grins down at him, and says in a voice still full of mirth, “aw, let him up, Professor. I’d like to see him try that again with a real sword!”

“No,” Jeritza responds in his laconic way. The pressure of his foot doesn’t let up, despite Felix’s squirming. Perhaps because of it. He looks down with those uncanny, colorless eyes of his, and Felix stills. Somehow, Felix feels no judgement behind that stare, none of the disappointment he’d expected from a teacher for his moment of temper. “Calmer?” 

Felix makes an irritated noncommittal sound and looks away, which Jeritza takes for the confirmation that it is. The professor moves his boot, and the orange-haired girl leans down to offer Felix a hand up. He considers slapping it away, but takes it. No reason to be rude to a potential training partner, even if it is wildly embarrassing to get beaten by an obvious trap. He knows it now that he’s cooled off. The opening in her form was clearly bait, and he’d just gone for it, like a hot headed idiot. 

“I’m Leonie Pinelli,” she introduces herself cheerfully once he’s on his feet. Sure, she can be cheerful. She just won. He brushes himself off. 

“Felix,” he grunts. 

“Fraldarius, I know. You’re one of the nobles who’s destined to get into the academy. Pretty sloppy, falling for something like that.”

He shoots her an unfriendly look. Before he can say anything that will permanently damage his chances of figuring out how she made him so mad without really doing anything, Ingrid swoops in. Probably to stop him from being irredeemably rude. 

“Felix! I didn’t see your last match, what happened? Why was Professor Jeritza standing on you?” she demands, with her usual irritating concern.

“Nothing,” he shoots back, and turns to stalk away. 

“I threw him,” Leonie answers for him, when Ingrid looks to her. “He’s… really upset, isn’t he?”

He hears Ingrid’s exasperated sigh, but gets back into line and has Sylvain’s arm around his shoulders before he can hear what she says. Sylvain is, of course, whining about the pretty girl who just shot him down, some “gorgeous” commoner from Enbarr who disarmed him with a sword trick he’d only ever seen on stage. Felix tunes him out after he starts describing her breasts, focused on the next match Leonie’s having. Ingrid gets off the pitch once she’s done her damage control with the other lancer, and some damn fool with a rose pinned to his doublet and the worst hairdo Felix had ever seen–and he’d seen Sylvian go through some phases he didn’t want to remember–is trying to convince Jeritza that it would be unbecoming of him to win against a commoner, and a girl at that. 

When Jeritza won’t budge ( _honestly, who still argues with that man after three hours of this?_ ), the idiot faces off reluctantly, and Leonie puts him in the dirt in two easy moves. The result soothes something in Felix. Ruffled pride, probably, though he’s not going to admit that, even to himself. She disables her next three opponents in neat succession, and Felix is forced to concede that maybe she’d be worth sparring with. By the time she’s on her fifth, she’s breathing hard and he’s considering asking _her_ if she’d train with him. When he catches Sylvain watching him watch her, however, and wiggling his shitty eyebrows, Felix crosses that off his list of possibilities. His terrible best friend would never let him live it down. 

He’ll just have to settle for being so good she’ll come to him. And that’s where Felix excels. 

2

Cassandra stretches, working out the knots in her muscles after days lying in bed. She’s still half-sure she dreamed most of what she remembered, being cradled in Lady Rhea’s arms as if she were still a small child… warm hands passing over her body, closing her wounds… the heavenly sound of a voice which must’ve been inspired by the Goddess herself… 

A knife whizzes by her face, startling her out of her reverie. 

“What the hell-?!” She snaps, looking around and ready to fight, sword springing into her hand. 

“There was a spider,” an uninterested voice says from the shadow of a column. A girl steps out, slim and dark, and pins Cassandra with her eyes. She suddenly feels like that knife must actually be stuck in her chest as the shock of _oh shit I’m so gay_ hits her like a battering ram. The girl is about her age, wearing rough-cut clothes and looking generally bored, but the “quietly dangerous” aesthetic has always gotten to Cassandra. She’s weak to the depictions of assassins and rogues in the kind of books nobody here approves of. She hasn’t been caught so far sneaking them into the monastery past Seteth’s watchful eye and stashing them under her pillow to read instead of studying. 

The way this girl looks at her says that she _knows_ , however. Something about the completely dispassionate non-expression in her eyes, like she’s seen Cassandra’s darkest secrets and wasn’t particularly excited by them. One slim, arched eyebrow quirks up. Cassandra remembers she’s been spoken to. She stammers out something along the lines of “thank you,” she never can quite remember exactly what, later. Whatever it is, the other girl shrugs and crosses the training yard to retrieve her knife. 

“H-how did you?” Cassandra manages, still stunned by her own level of lesbian energy. 

“How did I what?” the girl asks in that same tone of complete apathy as she wrenches a three inch blade from the wood paneling of the wall. Cassandra sees her make a disgusted expression at the spider, a big gangly brown thing with long, spotted brown and white legs. She thinks it’s pretty cool, herself, but knows most women here would run screaming at the idea of it. 

“How did you- all of it! How long were you there without me noticing? Why didn’t I notice you? How did you hit that tiny thing with a knife that size from that far away? How did you even see it?” 

“If you keep asking questions, I won’t have time to answer them,” the other girl notes drily. Cassandra closes her mouth. “In order,” she continues, “not long, I’m quiet and you aren’t, I’m very good with my knife, my eyes are better than yours.”

In an effort not to sputter in indignation, Cassandra keeps her mouth closed. The girl doesn’t seem inclined to continue speaking, so after a tense moment where they just look at each other, Cassandra blurts, “Do you want to spar?”

The girl looks at her like she’s grown a second head. Or another couple pairs of arms. After a long second, a tiny smile pulls at the corner of her lips. “Alright.” 

She sheathes the knife and heads for the rack of training weapons, hefts a lance. Considers it for a moment, then puts it back and picks up a different one. This, she deems an appropriate choice, and turns to find Cassandra still standing there dumbly, staring at her. 

“Are you going to get a sword, or just wait for me to hit you?”

This challenge spurs her to action, and Cassandra grins as she grabs a training sword off the rack. “How’d you know I used a sword?”

The other girl shrugs. “Couple of things. The way you stand. Calluses on your hands.” She settles into an easy fighting stance, unfamiliar but light on her feet. Something about it makes Cassandra wary, so she chooses a guarded stance herself, wooden blade low and knees bent for optimal escape ability. 

She’s still unprepared when the girl darts forwards, lance flashing out and then abruptly down, aiming for her legs. She dodges back, sword knocking the lance away, then presses the attack while her opponent is off balance. With how long she’s been recovering, Cassandra knows she isn’t at her very best, she needs to be on the offensive. Her reflexes are sluggish with disuse, and her muscles aren’t fully warmed up yet. She must not have been thinking, challenging a complete unknown to a fight before she’s even ready to take on a training dummy. _But_ , prudence and self restraint have never been her strong suits, and sometimes her gay speaks faster than her brain. Her sword will just have to make up for it. 

Four expertly dodged quick slices later, she thinks she may be in over her head. She tries a dirty move with her knee she’d picked up from watching the knights spar in her spare time; the girl hops back out of the way and swings for her head with the lance’s full weight. Another stolen move, this one adapted from Holst Goneril’s simple axe-wielding solution to irritating lancers, Cassandra takes her sword in two hands and brings it down hard against the block her opponent throws up just in time. Her grin widens as the dark girl tries for her face with the butt of the lance. She takes the hit gamely, rolling with the impact and coming up with her sword to the other girl’s throat. A tense moment stretches between them where the girl’s eyes flick back and forth between Cassandra’s blade and her own overextended state. Then those deep purple eyes fix on her face. 

“Hah!” Cassandra crows, starting to relax. “Got you. Admit I got you!”

The world spins suddenly, and she finds herself flat on her back with the other girl perched lightly over her chest, one foot stretched out to pin her sword arm to the ground, the live steel of that three inch dagger pressed dangerously close to her thudding pulse. 

_Dear Diary,_ she thinks in a moment of sheer dizzy shock, _today I learned that I am even gayer than I thought I was, and that I am very into women who can kick my ass. Also, ask Glenn about knives and sex, because wow._

“Do you yield?” The uninterested tone has vanished, replaced with breathless, smug victory. Cassandra squirms, and the boot on her wrist presses down painfully while the knife at her throat bites in. “Do you yield?” The girl practically sitting on her repeats, sharper.

Cassandra relaxes against the ground, gulping in air. “Ye-yeah. I yield.”

The knife, the boot, and the warm weight above her vanish simultaneously, and the girl is standing over her, offering a hand up. She takes it gratefully. The girl quirks another smug smile at her, puts her lance away, and turns to go. 

“Wait!” Cassandra’s voice stops her. She looks over one shoulder, gaze once again dispassionate. “I don’t even know your name. I’m Cassandra Charon.”

That tiny, fleeting smile. “Shamir.” 

And she’s gone.

Cassandra’s still standing there when Balthus and Holst come around the corner, bickering about something irrelevant, and find her staring at the space the other girl– _Shamir, what a perfect name_ –had vacated. 

“Hey Cassie,” Balthus greets her casually, putting one big hand on her shoulder. “You’re out of the infirmary early. Nasty scratch on your neck there, let me take care of that.” He brushes a couple of fingers along the skin of her neck, where Shamir’s knife had been, and the sting of minor healing magic barely even registers on her senses.

“Are you in there, Cassandra?” Holst asks her, a little concerned by her vacant expression. 

She turns to regard him without bothering to alter the stunned look she’s sure is plastered all over her. “Holst,” she says seriously, “I think I’m in love.”

3

It’s the Horsebow Moon by the time she comes to see him training, and by then he’s almost forgotten about his defeat at the beginning of term. So many things have changed. The Golden Deer have gotten a new professor, The Ashen Demon themself, though he’ll never let on how much the realization of who they were shook him. The idea of being trained by a legendary mercenary–even if their legend pales in comparison to that of their father–is much more attractive than that of watching Sylvain drool over Manuela Cassagranda for another eight months. He’s considering transferring classes, but they haven’t shown any interest in him and he’s not going to chase after someone’s approval. Even if they can best him with a sword. 

He’s had to watch Sylvain go through the realization that his brother was a worse slime than they’d all known he was, and then that the waste of breath was finally dead. Felix understands the complicated feelings a younger brother can have, and even though Glenn was never the kind of asshole Miklan was, there’s a different kind of love and hatred in having an untouchable standard to live up to. Trying to express this to Sylvain went… about how he’d expected it to, actually. Which meant; badly. He’s currently trying to work out the stress and shame of how terribly he’d handled that situation by annihilating training dummies. 

Someone is watching him, he can feel their eyes. Has been, for the past twenty minutes. He’d figured it was Ingrid being worried, or one of the monastery cats, but either of those parties would’ve wandered off by now. No, somebody’s watching him on purpose. Time to do something about it. He wheels around to address whoever’s lurking with his best neutral-to-unfriendly tone.

“If you don’t have any business here, go away. You’re bothering me.”

And there she is, in most of her uniform–though he’s not one to talk about respecting the thing, he ordered three vests in the academy style with his father’s money just so he wouldn’t have to wear the stupid, heavily embroidered shirts they insist on–and staring at him. He flashes back to her laughing over him while Jeritza kept him down with a boot on his back and waits for the teasing to start. However, she doesn’t seem to remember it. At all. 

He’s not sure if he’s offended or glad. 

Regardless, he comes out of the conversation in a better mood than he’d gone into it, and with a plan to train with one of the few people in this overwrought castle he thinks might actually be worth his time. Finding out about a month ago, through the inevitable gossip Sylvain insisted on sharing with him at mealtimes, that the orange-haired stranger who’d kicked his ass in their first week had been trained by the Blade Breaker himself made Felix feel even better about the outcome of that fight, and had stoked his desire for a rematch. When he showed up for the promised training session, however, she’s nowhere to be seen. 

He paces, frustration building alongside his embarrassment. What, is he not good enough for her to show up on time? Is she going to stand him up, leaving him waiting out here like some jilted bride? He’s on the verge of deciding he’s offended that she doesn’t remember beating him at the beginning of term when she rounds the corner of a hedge and approaches. That same friendly, neutral expression is on her face, and she says “sorry to keep you waiting!” like it’s nothing. 

“How long did you expect me to stand here?” Felix growls, deeply irritated that his muscles have begun to cool off while he waited. 

They bicker for a few moments about how long he’d taken to select a time to meet–what can he say, he’s not exactly hurting for sparring partners, just ones he thinks are actually worth any effort–and she finally gives him the go-ahead. Felix shoots across the intervening space, plants his foot on something with more give than he expects… 

And tumbles ass over teakettle into a pit trap. 

He makes an undignified noise as he falls, then lands at the bottom with a thud that knocks all the wind out of him. Leonie’s laughter rings out, tactless as ever, from somewhere above him, and Felix can’t help the hot flush of rage and embarrassment that floods him. He struggles to his feet as soon as he can breathe. 

“A pit trap? Really?” He demands irritably

Her face appears over the rim of the pit, grinning unrepentantly down at him. “That’s right! How you feelin’ down there?”

Felix snaps the only thing that comes to mind. “Coward!” 

It doesn’t seem to faze her in the slightest. “Say what you want, but Captain Jeralt taught me this one!”

“Fine,” he huffs, holding an arm up. “Pull me out then.”

Some shuffling from above, then she reaches down into the pit and takes his hand. Hers is warm and dry, callused from bow and lancework, and the supple leather of her glove is soft to the touch. He refuses to think about how nice that is. Felix jumps, Leonie heaves, and with their combined effort he manages to clamber up out of her dumb trap. 

“Whew! You’re heavier than you look,” she says unnecessarily. Felix knows he looks and moves like he weighs nothing, it’s something he cultivates. At least on the movement front. But even wiry muscle weighs a lot, and honestly she should’ve known that. Perhaps he’s being uncharitable in his shame.

Before he can say anything rude, the spectre of something his father would call “honor” rises in his mind, forcing him to cool off. He has to acknowledge, to himself at least, that he’s impressed with Leonie’s ingenuity, interested to learn from someone who can apparently beat him. He takes a deep breath. “Alright, sure. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that.”

“If this were for real, you’d be dead. Aren’t you glad I put straw down there, instead of spikes?” 

Felix isn’t sure if she’s rubbing it in or just taking a victory lap, but he’s sure he’d be doing the same thing, so he doesn’t rise to the bait. He gives credit where it’s due, though it still chafes a little, and thanks her for reminding him so pointedly that he’s vulnerable to traps when he’s angry. Then, she completely disarms him by asking for tips on her close combat fighting, and he finds himself fighting back a smile when he grumbles that he’ll help. Her genuine excitement at the prospect is flattering, and as soon as she runs off, he lets the corners of his mouth quirk up. 

This is, of course, when Sylvain appears. 

“So Leonie, huh?” He smirks suggestively. Felix fantasizes about shoving him into the pit trap. “I have to admit, she’s not my type, but I should’ve figured you’d go for the aggressive ones.”

“Sylvain,” Felix says, with infinite patience. “Shut the fuck up.”

Sylvain’s genuine laugh is dumb and awful, as usual.

4

Cassandra stares at herself in the mirror, with her hair cut short and her new armor gleaming. Thunderbrand is at her side, as it has been since she graduated from the academy, and its warm, slightly unnerving presence is a comfort. Nothing about her has changed, except that everything has changed. 

_My name is Catherine,_ she tries. _I am Thunder Catherine, a Knight of Seiros. Thunderstrike Cassandra is dead. The only name I answer to is Catherine. Prepare to taste the sword of one who serves the Goddess._

She likes that line. Maybe one day she’ll get the chance to use it. 

“Are you going to hide in there all day, or are you going to come out and show us the new look?” Holst’s voice calls from outside her room. “Because Baltie and I can think of better things to do than wait for you to finish doing your hair.”  
Balthus barks a laugh. “As if you don’t take two hours every morning!”

“That’s because Hillie likes to help me! If it were up to me-” 

“It would take three hours,” Balthus interrupts Holst’s defense.

Cassa- _Catherine_ snorts and finally tears herself away from the mirror. She takes a deep breath and opens the door. Balthus has Holst in a headlock and is busily trying to muss his hair, while Holst squirms ineffectively and holds Balthus’s wrist away from his own head. The two idiots stop tussling to gawk at her. 

“Woah,” Balthus manages after a long moment. 

“That’s… drastic.” Holst agrees. 

Catherine knows, she’d had to argue with the barber in town for fifteen minutes before he’d cut her hair. Long enough that she’d threatened to take her sword and do it herself. That’d been the argument that finally brought the fussy idiot around, and he’d neatly braided then snipped off her waist-length hair to just long enough to cover her ears. It fluffed out now, in a slightly undignified flip, and she’d left it loose because she couldn’t really do anything else with it. Honestly, it would be a relief not to have to deal with really long hair every time she wanted to do anything. Maybe, if she kept telling herself that, it wouldn’t feel like such a loss. 

“Glenn would say it’s more efficient for fighting,” Holst says gently. Glenn’s death is still a recent pain in all of their hearts. 

_Christophe would say it was a good look for me,_ Catherine’s thoughts fill in unbidden. She shakes her head, as if she can knock loose the unpleasant memories. 

“Catherine?” A new voice interrupts their moment of silence, and Catherine turns. In a rush, a better memory blooms in her mind. A girl in dark clothes pinning her to the dusty floor of the training hall. A knife whizzing past her head. A grin tossed over a shoulder. _Shamir_. 

“Uh,” she responds eloquently. 

_Shamir got hotter,_ Catherine realizes with a start. The amused quirk of one eyebrow is Shamir’s only response, as if she can read Catherine’s mind. 

“You _are_ Catherine, right?” 

“Yep, that’s her!” Holst answers, grinning brightly. He grabs Balthus’s arm and begins hauling his larger friend away. “We’ve got someplace to be, we’ll leave you two alone.”

“But we-”

“Shut up, Balthus.”

They vanish into a building, leaving Catherine with the subject of an embarrassing number of her fantasies. Back during her academy days, she’d seen Shamir around a few times, but they hadn’t spoken beyond that one sparring match. Now here she was, after five years, and Catherine’s imagination hasn’t even sort of done her justice. 

Short, straight, blue-black hair. Deep purple eyes. Flawless skin. Thick black necklace, green jacket, low-cut shirt– Catherine purposefully drags her eyes back to Shamir’s face before she can fixate on anything lower than that. Shamir’s still looking back, expression bored. Does she remember?

“Yeah,” Catherine manages. “Yes, I’m Catherine. Can I help you with anything?”

“Hi. I’m Shamir.” 

She doesn’t remember. Catherine’s not sure how she feels about that. “Um, yeah, I’ve heard a couple of things about you. You’re a knight too, right?”

Shamir shrugs. “Yep.”

No further helpful comment seems to be forthcoming. Hm. “Well, maybe we’ll get to work together! You’ve got quite the reputation, you know.” _Goddess, it’s easier to talk to brick walls. At least you know the wall isn’t judging you for babbling like an idiot._

“Rhea wants to talk to you.”

“Oh? Lady Rhea sent you to get me, is that it?” She puts a little emphasis on _lady_ , trying to gently suggest that Shamir should use the correct mode of address. The other woman just nods. Infuriating. Catherine takes a breath and nods back. “Okay. Well, thanks for the heads up. I’ll get going now.”

Shamir doesn’t move to leave. Catherine closes the door to her quarters, and walks past her towards the building Holst and Balthus had disappeared into. The two men are nowhere in sight, though Balthus’s graduation pin is on the floor by one of the tables. Again. She sighs and picks it up. She’s halfway to the audience chamber when Shamir speaks again, and Catherine almost falls up the stairs. How in the goddess’s name does the woman move so quietly?! Catherine thought she’d stayed in the courtyard, hadn’t even noticed her following like a shadow. 

“I like your hair short.”

A thrill only tangentially related to the brief spike of panic at realizing she’s not alone on the stairs. _She does remember_.

“Thanks.”

When they reach the audience chamber, Lady Rhea informs them that they’re to be partners, and Catherine wonders whether to praise Lady Rhea or the Goddess for the fantastic good fortune. Regardless, she has time for neither because they’re being sent out on a mission immediately. 

_Good_ , Catherine grins to herself. _I can show her how much I’ve improved since we sparred. I’ll impress her with my sword, and then… well, who knows? We’re partners now. Let’s see what happens._

5

Felix rolls, letting an arrow fly over his head, and comes to his feet almost a yard closer. Leonie is already lining up her next shot, and the look in her eyes is the best kind of intense. The thrill of a real challenge shoots through him, and he can feel the slightly feral grin on his face. He’s closing the distance quickly, careful to keep a look out for where he’s placing his feet. She’s had a week to set up this course, and there’s traps strewn about everywhere. He dodges a cable-restraint snare and Leonie’s next arrow, now only moments away from closing with her. 

He figures she can get one, maybe two more shots off in the time it’ll take him to get close enough to make her pick up her lance. Sparing a glance for the ground, he uses his forward momentum to leap across a wide pit and nearly lands directly in a padded foothold trap. Something warmer than the thrumming joy of a fight fills his chest. She really went out of her way to make sure she wouldn’t badly injure him, no matter which of her ploys he fell for. He’s sure there’s something soft at the bottom of that pit, and all of the traps are set with an eye to capturing without doing real damage. It’s… nice. For someone to think about him that carefully. 

Warm feelings or no, Felix isn’t about to lose this fight. He hops a tripwire, jukes to his right to avoid another arrow, watches Leonie drop her bow and go for her lance, and draws his sword from its scabbard at his hip. He closes the last few feet to her, and she’s got the shaft of her lance up between them. She’s grinning too, and sweat is beading on her temple. It’s a warm day for the Pegasus Moon, and Felix is sweating too. Of course, he’s been running a gauntlet, and she’s just been firing arrows at his head. 

“Tired already?” He grits out, trying to overwhelm her with sheer strength. She’s been using her arms, and he hasn’t, maybe he can break her guard and end this before it starts. 

She huffs a laugh and twists, turning to slide him along the length of her lance. “Not even close.” 

He grins, letting himself fall forward, and pivots to make a quick strike at her hamstrings. She dodges out of the way, continuing the motion of her twist to chase him with the lance. Her foot flashes out, trying to trip him, but he steps over it and uses his free hand to make a grab for her hair. Leonie makes an irritated noise as she yanks her head away, giving him an opening to go for her abdomen. They trade blows, Felix landing a solid hit to her chest with the pommel of his sword and Leonie nailing him in the shoulder with the butt of her lance, both training weapons creaking protests at the abuse. 

They fall apart to circle, both panting slightly, and grin at one another. When they close again, it’s Leonie on the offensive, Felix falling back towards the edge of her ring of traps. He’s dangerously close to a thin strand of wire he figures will drop something out of the tree it’s attached to when he abruptly jerks to the left, sending Leonie stumbling forward and... _Yes!_ Right into the tripwire. A moderately sized hay bale falls from a branch overhead, thumping into Leonie’s shoulders and knocking her to her knees. 

Felix leaps for the advantage. He comes up behind her and presses his wooden blade to her throat, his entire body vibrating with victory. He says nothing. She starts to move and he sticks his free hand in her hair, grabbing tight and pulling the training sword against her neck in threat. He growls softly, for good measure. 

Leonie relaxes with an irritated sounding exhale. It’s not the first time he’s beaten her, just the first time he’s won at this particular game of theirs. 

“Alright,” she grumbles. “You win.”

He pulls the blade away, extracting his hand from her hair with as much care as he can. Still, it’s tangled and he pulls accidentally. A sharp gasp freezes Felix where he is. 

“Leonie? Did I hurt you?” He asks, concern and incredulity mixing in his tone. Seriously? They’d made a habit of comparing training bruises for almost two months now, and a little hair pulling is what gets her to make pathetic noises?

“No,” she retorts, and Felix hears something weird in her voice. “Just get off me already.” 

Felix lets her up, and Leonie hops to her feet with her usual grace. She still doesn’t turn to look at him though, which is odd. He cocks his head, sheathes his blade, and crosses his arms. After a minute, she turns around. She’s flushed, whether with exertion or shame he’s not sure, but he grins at her anyway. 

“Impressive traps, but I’m getting better at spotting them.”

“Using the terrain to your advantage,” she agrees readily, refusing to meet his eyes. “One of the first things Jeralt taught me. Well done.”

“And you’re using some of the tricks Catherine showed you, too,” Felix continues, trying to figure out why she won’t look him in the face. “What’s wrong,” he probes, “can’t bear to look at me after I beat you?”

This gets her attention, and she glares at him. That’s better. One hand goes to her hair, smoothing the back flat. “Shut up! I’ll get you next time.”

He grins back. “Sure you will. Same time next week?”

“Whatever,” Leonie snaps. “And in the meantime, I expect to see you in the training yard tomorrow. Your bow work is still sloppy.”

“I wasn’t the one who decided I needed to work on it,” he shoots back, tone more defensive than he feels. Arguing with Leonie is almost as much fun as fighting with her. 

“Yeah, well, you’re defenseless if you’re not within sword range, so maybe I want you to actually survive your next bandit fight. Anyway, I told you to shut up.” She shoves his shoulder, and her grin returns. “Nice hit, by the way. I’m not gonna be able to show off that bruise.”

Felix snorts. “Sylvain will look at it for you.”

She rolls her eyes and shoves him again, and everything is back to normal. “C’mon, help me disarm these so we can go get something to eat.” 

The two of them set about dismantling her trap-gauntlet, and Felix only gets caught in two of the snares he’s trying to take apart. Her laughing at him when he did that used to make it more embarrassing, but now something about her amusement is soothing. Not that he’d ever let her know that. He still spits curses at her while she disentangles him from whatever contraption he’s stuck in, and she still ignores him and explains the correct way to disarm this particular one. Leonie knows how to build a fascinating variety of hunting traps, and Felix is slowly learning how to make and destroy all of them. 

It’s relaxing, cleaning up after their game. He’s in such a good mood when they get back to the monastery that he almost doesn’t want to hit Sylvain for the inevitable eyebrow-waggling. Almost. 

+1

Shamir lies comfortably against Catherine, watching the two students bicker and take apart the traps strewn across the ground in this section of the woods. Her jacket is draped across a tree branch, and Catherine is playing with her hair. It’s warm, and comfortable, and familiar. They’d both pretended they just wanted to go for a walk, but it had become a habit to watch Felix and Leonie’s extracurricular training sessions. At first, they’d both been worried about a real fight breaking out between the two, but they’d quickly realized that it wasn’t genuine antagonism that kept their hotheaded protege coming back to the Fraldarius kid. 

Catherine groans when Leonie’s boisterous laugh drifts up to where they’re sitting, just out of sight in the branches of a big old oak tree. She shifts, pulling Shamir closer in the cradle of her body, and shakes her head. 

“We were never that dumb and oblivious,” Catherine asserts, and Shamir can hear the smile in her voice. 

Shamir shrugs slightly, knowing the corners of her own mouth are pulling upwards and glad Catherine can’t see. “You were.”

“Hey!” Catherine tries to sit up indignantly and nearly knocks them out of the tree. Shamir snorts and grabs hold of her stupid partner with one arm, locking her legs around the branch they’re sitting on. This prevents them from falling, but leaves her in the awkward position of holding most of Catherine’s weight with one arm. 

Catherine flails, squawks, and eventually manages to right herself. Shamir shoots her a look over one shoulder, and sees her partner grinning. “I knew you’d catch me.”

Shamir feels the blush heat her cheeks. Declarations of trust like this always get her. “Shut up.” She faces forwards again, eyes tracking Leonie and Felix as they work together to uncover a pitfall trap and partially fill it in again. 

“Shamir,” Catherine coaxes, one hand returning to play with her hair. She closes her eyes and leans back again. “Lover. Dearest. My sunshine.”

That nickname earns Catherine another glare, but a half-hearted one. Shamir knows she’s weak to the kind of unadorned adoration that is her partner’s specialty. “I told you to shut up,” she repeats. 

Catherine chuckles and rests her other hand on Shamir’s hip, two fingers dipping beneath the hem of her shirt to press against skin. “And I ignored you. That’s how this relationship works, right?” 

“Quit calling it that, it’s a partnership,” Shamir mumbles, pressing her head up into Catherine’s gently scratching fingers. “And _don’t_ compare me to a cat.”

This earns her a real laugh, pressed into her hair. “You read my mind, partner.”

Shamir smiles, eyes still closed. “That’s how this relationship works.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I know it's impossible for Shamir to have been in Fodlan when Catherine was still Cassandra and in school but hear me out; what if the Dagdan invasion was ten years earlier because the first time I did the math I messed up and now I'm too lazy to go back and fix it? Also Glenn, even though he's just a mention, is like 15/16 when the crew is in school, I like to think he's about eight years older than Felix. We never get any canon years for the things that happened to Glenn, so I can make up what I want.  
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
